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You see that?
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That's a a tear of happiness for the fact that my mouth is on fire.
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Hey, what's going on everybody?
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For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today I'm joined by the bold and adventurous Coyote Peterson.
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You can catch him on his tremendously popular YouTube channel Brave Wilderness where people tune in by the millions to see Coyote go on strange animal adventures and get bit by dangerous insects all for your entertainment.
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Coyote, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
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This looks much more dangerous than some of the things that I have encountered in the past 365 days.
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So, a little nervous today. Not used to chicken. Bullet ants, no problem.
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Chicken wings, let's see what happens. It's a new frontier.
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How are you with hot food?
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Uh actually had my very first hot wing just the other day.
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I am not a spicy food person, so this should be very interesting.
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So, this first one is Sriracha. Sriracha's no big deal. Okay.
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I don't even think I've ever had Sriracha sauce before. Oh, it's a little spicy. I can feel it.
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So, I think that the first reaction that a lot of people have when they watch your videos is what's up with this guy.
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So, if you don't mind, I'd like to get into your origin story a little bit.
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Where does the Coyote nickname come from?
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When I was a kid, my mom used to take my sister and I across the country.
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We'd travel all throughout the United States.
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We'd ultimately end up in Tucson, Arizona.
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And there's a lizard there called a regal horn lizard, my favorite lizard in the world.
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But, they're really, really camouflaged.
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So, to find these lizards, I used to actually follow roadrunners around.
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Now, the roadrunners love to eat horn lizards.
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So, like the Warner Brothers cartoon, my mom started calling me Coyote because I was chasing roadrunners around the desert looking for these lizards.
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And I never actually found a horn lizard by following a roadrunner, but I guess in the end I got a pretty cool nickname.
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Who's your guy that ranks all the systems? Brett, right?
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There's guy THAT WATCHES YOU. WOW.
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He's like this he ranks people's performances and how long they last, right? That's Brett Baker. How is he doing? super fan.
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Shout out to Brett Baker, a name that comes up over the course of this show often. Has he been on the show? Not yet. Not yet.
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You know what we should do?
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We should get Brett on the show and I'll bring a bullet ant.
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And if Brett gets all the way through, then he can get a bullet ant.
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He gets a bullet ant, too. Brett?
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So as someone who's eaten two Carolina Reapers, I know that sometimes the consequences of a shoot can last long after the cameras cut. Yeah.
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I don't even know what a Carolina Reaper is.
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I'm assuming that's a pepper of some sort.
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Hottest pepper in the world.
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Hottest pepper in the world. Twice?
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You didn't learn the first time? Man, you're bold.
2:58
What is the bite or sting that had the worst aftermath?
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Worst bite or sting I've ever gotten.
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Well, there's been a lot of them.
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I'd have to say it's the most recent thing that I went through where I was wearing a bee beard and it was an epic fail.
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Chris, who we were working with a bee specialist, said, "He's done this before.
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Maybe two or three stings."
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I was like, "Okay, two or three stings. This is going to be fun.
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This is, you know, a good kind of comedic episode."
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Just shave off my fur beard and wear a bee beard. Mhm.
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What happened was some rogue bees came into the swarm that was on my face.
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And once I got stung once and then another time, the bees started releasing a pheromone that was a fight pheromone.
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And before I knew it, my face became the target of multiple bee stings and 32 stings later, I was in incredible pain.
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My face swelled up almost immediately. My eyes are watering.
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The episode looked like I was crying.
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I wasn't actually crying. I was just like, "Ugh."
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Imagine how my face will probably end up by the end of today, and it was extremely painful.
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And the aftereffect was about 48 hours of my face looking like a lumpen potato.
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So, don't don't do bee beards. Mhm. Something's happening.
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Something's happening inside of a mouth right now.
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Feels like little ants starting to bite me. Mhm. Mhm.
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Amazingly, Brave Wilderness is now the most-watched digital wilderness channel, beating out legacy brands like National Geographic.
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But, it's important to pay homage to those who paved the way.
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So, what I want to do is bounce some of the most legendary figures in the field off of you, and then just get your snap reaction to them. That sound good? Yeah. All right. Laptop, please.
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cuz I I've loved that you brought up that question, because you always have to talk about where you get your inspiration from. You know, I love that. All right. First one, Jane Goodall.
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Yes, that's one that a lot of people don't ever bring up to me.
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With our brand, you know, we're getting more and more in a direction of how do you promote conservation?
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How do you bring all these animals to a public eye that that need help?
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And I think somebody like Jane is a wonderful example of somebody that's driven the spear for conservation for gosh, since since I've been a kid. Justin O. Schmidt. Oh, yeah, Justin. You know Justin? Of course.
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I'm actually, I think I'll be working with Justin this summer.
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We're both participating in a documentary that's being done in Arizona by a student there, um that is researching this pain sting index.
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And it was actually Justin's experimentations with all of these bugs.
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He's got this amazing chart that we found on the internet, cuz I've been stung by harvester ants, and everybody's like, "You got to see this chart with all these other things."
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I didn't know anything about it at the time.
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He's been stung by absolutely everything.
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You name it, he's been stung by.
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He kind of sets the this is a Scoville chart? Scoville scale. Scoville scale.
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That's what he's done with with bites and stings.
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So, yeah, I I carry his little chart on my phone all the time. It's awesome.
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Steve Steve Irwin Well, I grew up watching Steve.
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I mean, I was the kid that was in my backyard trying to catch snapping turtles pretending that they were crocodiles.
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Um I had the khaki shorts. I had khaki shirts.
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Like, if you didn't love Steve, you don't belong in the animal space, period.
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Um miss him, for sure, uh as everybody does and and every single day when we work on our content, uh I just think about the fact that somebody like that inspired us and we're hoping to carry on the torch in a sense for the next generation of animal lovers.
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Oh, it's got a little wolf on there. Mhm. That's cool.
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You ever just drink these like straight out of the bottle to like prepare like in your training? No, I wouldn't like to.
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No, it's never occurred to me to try that, Coyote. I don't know, you know.
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I mean, I don't go around like grabbing random insects being like, "Tomorrow's the bull ant here.
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Couple more tarantula hawks."
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But, you know, I don't It might work, though. It might. All right.
6:42
So, of course, people want to hear about bites and stings, but for my money, your best videos are these ones where you make a unique connection with a wild animal on set.
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When you think about the times that you've established some sort of unique bond while filming, are there any that stand out? Oh, yeah.
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Well, uh thank you for mentioning that because yes, a lot of people want to know about the bites and stings, but it's really only about 10% of what's on our channel.
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Probably the one that stands out the most is the ocelot, which was one of our most phenomenal encounters we've ever had.
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Wild ocelot in jungles of Costa Rica. It was a young one.
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It's just a juvenile, but came out of nowhere in the woods.
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I mean, we did know that there it had been spotted in that area.
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We were told if you kind of walk this trail at night, you may stumble upon it.
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And sure enough, we were out there looking for eyelash vipers, which are these beautiful colorful snakes with these vipers that live in the trees.
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And we heard these paws coming out of darkness.
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I mean, I've never jumped so hard.
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I mean, cuz you think jaguar.
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Oh, no, we're going to get attacked by a jaguar.
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And here comes this little ocelot out of nowhere and she was just the most playful, incredible creature in the world.
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And and Mark, our director, is like, "Dude, we got to shoot an episode out of this right now."
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So, we all just start scrambling to be like, "Play with the ocelot.
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Whatever happens, just roll the camera."
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So, we just kept rolling.
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And they got to the point where the ocelot was like, "You guys are in in my playground.
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Like, we're going to hang out all night, right?"
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It got to the point where it was like 2:00 in the morning.
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We're like, "Man, like, we're running out of camera batteries here.
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Like, we got to head back to base camp."
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And um that ocelot wanted to play nonstop.
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So, it was it was a pretty cool experience I'm never going to forget. That one's good. Thank you, Coyote. That was hot. A little spicy. Mhm.
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All right, Coyote, we have a recurring segment on our show called Explain That Gram.
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And what we do is we do a deep dive on our guest's Instagram.
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We pull interesting pictures that need more context.
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So, I'll show you the picture and then you just tell me the bigger story. Does that sound good? Yep.
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All right, laptop, please. Again with the laptop.
8:39
Is this when you got a uh Kylie Jenner lip kit or You know, we probably could have called that the Kylie Jenner lip challenge.
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Honestly, it's at this point that I was the most afraid that my lips were going to pop.
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I don't know how far a human lip can stretch, but it just kept going and going.
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After about 15 minutes, when we knew I wasn't going to go into anaphylactic shock, which can happen if you're stung a bunch by bees, we knew I was kind of in the clear.
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And then we went to Chipotle.
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And we walked in and I looked like that.
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And the kids working there were like, "You kind of look like that guy, Coyote Peterson."
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And I was like, "I am Coyote Peterson.
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I just got stung a bunch times by bees."
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And they gave us free Chipotle. It was a great day. Aw. I mean, love that guy. You and Jeff Goldblum.
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You're a big Jurassic Park guy. Huge Jurassic Park fan.
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The biggest Jurassic Park fan there is, arguably.
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I actually brought my little Dr.
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Ian Malcolm toy from when I was a kid on Conan.
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The producers at Conan wanted to know everything like that I was going to do.
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And like, I started going down this road.
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And I was like, "Oh, I got some tricks up my sleeve."
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They're like, "There's no tricks."
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I was like, better just not tell you about my little toy then.
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And what I love about that photo right there is I had my arm around him and he has his arm around me and I kind of he was like kind of squeezing my shoulder and I tickled his ribs and I gave him that Jurassic Park laugh that he did in the helicopter.
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The And that moment he's laughing and then he turns and he goes, that's my laugh.
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All right, one more for you.
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Face to face with the Wolverine. That was so much work.
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People don't realize how tough it was to convince Steve Kroschel that I could get face to face with a Wolverine.
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Steve Kroschel has been raising Wolverines for 30 years and when we showed up and I was like, yeah Steve, I got to get in an enclosure with the Wolverine.
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He's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
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I thought you wanted to take pictures.
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We were like, No, we're bringing Wolverines.
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Steve was like, I got to be with the Wolverine.
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So there's this whole panic.
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He put me through some incredible tests and when I finally got to meet Bamf, who's the Wolverine, face to face, it was like a childhood dream come true.
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Most incredible animal I've ever been face to face with.
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Ghost pepper and blueberry.
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I had blueberries for breakfast actually.
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Maybe that's going to work in my favor.
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This one is actually kind of blue like a blueberry. Mhm.
10:54
That was a little bit of a blueberry kick to it.
10:57
What's the animal myth or falsehood that drives you craziest?
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People are terrified of sharks.
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Now, make no mistake, I grew up watching Jaws, love Spielberg, love that movie.
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But there were a lot of misnomers that came from a movie like that and and subsequent movies that have personified sharks as these villains, as these killers that are just out there to eat humans.
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Now, that's not to say that sharks are not dangerous and need to be treated with complete respect.
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Um, they certainly do, but there's a lot of people that have an unnecessary fear of sharks.
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Any kid that's out there, I don't want them to be afraid to go to the beach because a shark might come and eat them. You got to love sharks.
11:30
Sharks are there, they're doing an amazing thing for the environment. Lips are tingling.
11:37
That's probably a good sign, right?
11:39
That last one actually kind of snuck up after the fact.
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And you know when it hits is like when you're breathing out.
11:45
Breathing in, it's like, that's nice.
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Breathing out, it's like a dragon's breath.
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That's what I do, and people always wonder.
11:52
I'm always going like Yeah. Like that.
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And that's what I'm doing.
11:54
I'm getting the little instant relief.
11:56
I feel like one of Khaleesi's dragons from Game of Thrones. Brains are hanging out. Okay. Mhm.
12:06
That one's got good flavor to it. You can tell right away. Tell what?
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It's starting to burn my face. Something's happening.
12:15
Yeah, something's definitely happening there. Okay. I think I know why.
12:19
So, I want to talk about survival for a second, because as the Coyote Pack knows, it's not all just cuddly animals and venomous snakes.
12:25
Just so you guys know, I'm starting to sweat now. Mhm. Okay.
12:28
Good thing I wore this leather hat. Yeah. Okay.
12:32
What's your move if you're hiking along a trail and you find yourself face-to-face with an angry grizzly bear?
12:38
Man, did you know that we had this situation happen to us this past summer in Alaska?
12:41
Do you know that we had a bear scare?
12:43
Face-to-face with a mother brown bear and her three cubs. That was crazy.
12:47
So, a lot of times they tell you to carry bear spray, right?
12:51
Which is like a super intensified pepper spray, which probably ranks somewhere up in here.
12:56
That spray, when it hits the bear's nose and eyes, usually will send the bear what happened to me?
13:04
What's going on right now?
13:04
And the bear will go in the opposite direction.
13:06
Where you run into trouble is that if a bear does charge, you don't have bear spray.
13:10
If it's a brown bear or grizzly, you drop on the ground, you get into a ball, and you protect your neck.
13:15
Brown bears aren't so much out there to eat you as they are to just eliminate a territorial threat.
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A black bear, on the other hand, is another story.
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They can be about 3 to 400 lb, and a black bear will eat you.
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So, if you get attacked by blackbear, you fight with everything you've got.
13:28
But, brown bear, grizzly bear, on the GROUND PLAY DEAD. WOW.
13:36
LOOK AT THAT SET OF TEETH.
13:42
WOW, this one has a literally has a bomb on it. The bomb. Beyond insanity. You know where it hits?
13:49
It's It's at the back of your throat with a little dangly punching bag Yeah.
13:54
Like it gets stuck on there and like Man, this That's all over that side. I'm going to go legit. See that?
13:59
There's a lot I see you dashed it right there.
14:01
I'm going to take the big bite.
14:04
I'm going to don't bite right there. Oh. Oh. Oh my word, right there.
14:12
Something's happening, right?
14:12
As soon as I think I've said that a couple times, I'm like It's a slow onset of like It's a wave.
14:20
YEAH, YOUR BODY REACTS to it.
14:20
It responds to it in ways that you never really thought possible with hot sauce until you start playing in the clouds like we're doing today. Man, that's so hot.
14:31
It's um It's really tough to get yourself to force yourself to swallow something that hot.
14:39
Cuz you don't really have to clean the wings, Coyote.
14:41
No, I'm going all the way.
14:42
I have a lot of respect for it. I respect it. Yeah.
14:44
Our commentators are always clamoring for the guests that they want to see on the show.
14:49
Oh, it's so hot right now. I can't bite my teeth.
14:54
And I imagine that it's kind of the same for you that people are always clamoring for the stunts, for the animal faces to face that they want to see.
15:01
What's the one thing now? Get eaten by a whale.
15:05
Everybody wants to see the old Pinocchio.
15:07
Yeah, I'm telling you you would be surprised how many people are like, "Can you get swallowed by a whale?"
15:12
Like it doesn't work like that though.
15:14
Like I don't think you can be swallowed by a whale. I actually have a tear.
15:16
Can you guys see this on your your tight? You see that?
15:20
That's a a tear of happiness for the fact that my mouth is on fire. All right. Oh gosh. Oh man.
15:38
This sauce will blow you away. Double bite. I'm going for three. Woah. Three bites.
15:47
I know you're watching, Brett. I'm one Oh my gosh. I regret that now.
15:53
Oh man, here come the waterworks.
15:53
That's going to be a tough one to get down.
15:58
So, you've eaten a lot of strange things in your time on YouTube.
16:00
You've had killer bee honey.
16:01
You had that durian fruit.
16:04
But, the regional foods in Ohio might be stranger, weirder than all of those things even.
16:10
So, what I want to do is bounce some of the regional foods in Ohio off of you and then just get your reaction to them. Does that sound good?
16:17
Well, my nose is running. Mhm.
16:19
Do you guys don't have like tissues?
16:19
It just you guys want that. The runningness. Mhm. Okay, I'm ready.
16:25
Have you had a a terminator?
16:27
I have actually tried to eat that once with a friend. Hold on.
16:31
There's like it's like there's like a a small like that Mad Dog is in the back of my throat.
16:35
I think it just kicked me on this side over here.
16:37
Like a little like flake of something just went tonsil crazy.
16:44
Yes, that burger is so big. So big.
16:44
I got to the point where I was like there's no more bun, no more of these toppings.
16:50
I just tried to like down the meat. I couldn't finish it. What about buckeyes? Oh yeah.
16:54
Yeah, I eat buckeyes all the time.
16:55
Those are kind of like Reese's Pieces on like I don't know, . 357 Mad Dog. Yeah, they're awesome.
17:03
Have you ever had Cincinnati style chili?
17:05
Oh yeah, and my editor, Chris, loves Skyline Chili, which is I guess it originated in Cincinnati, right?
17:10
Yeah, don't hang out in the editing suite after Chris has been to Skyline.
17:13
How's your face feeling right now?
17:15
I feel like nobody ever asked how you're doing. Thank you, Coyote. I appreciate that. out for you, man.
17:21
So, here's what I would say is it's it's uh it's burning like it does. My lips are on fire. My mouth is on fire.
17:26
My tongue's swelling a little bit. It's very uncomfortable.
17:32
But, at the same time, Coyote, I invited you to the show.
17:34
So, I feel like I have to put up a front.
17:36
I have to be professional.
17:37
So, I don't let that vulnerability show.
17:39
I try not to let that vulnerability show. But, for you for you. All right.
17:42
That would be like if I invite you out in the swamp and I was like, "Hey, man.
17:45
Let's get bit by snapping turtles."
17:46
And then I was like, "You just you do it."
17:47
You know what it would be like if you if you brought me out to the swamp and you're like, "Let's go look at snapping turtles."
17:53
And then you've got a snapping turtle and you freaked out. Yeah. You know what I mean?
17:56
I would be like, "Well, this guy doesn't know what he's doing over here."
17:58
Man, it's You guys don't realize like you watch and you're like, "Oh, man. It can't be that hot."
18:03
I didn't think it was either.
18:05
I really thought that like these got other guys you know like having trouble just controlling the amount of fire that's in my mouth right now.
18:20
This is Blair's Mega Death Sauce with Liquid Rage.
18:22
It's tradition around here to put a little dab on the last wing.
18:26
Is it already on the wing?
18:28
It is already on the wing, but I put a little extra for the people out there.
18:31
You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm happy to do it.
18:32
Do you ever ever drink it out of the bottle?
18:37
Seems like a loaded question. No. Oh, man. It just bubbled. Did you see that?
18:43
It just went I'm not going to drink it out of the bottle.
18:47
I won't I won't be that guy, but I will give a good little hawk of it there. There you go. That was good. Legit. That is very legit. Okay.
18:56
That looks dangerous right there, right? That's like ketchup.
19:01
I was really confident when we were right here.
19:03
I was like, "This is not a problem."
19:05
We lull you into that false sense of security and then Yeah, it's like you trip on a really tall flight of stairs and there's no way you're going to stop yourself on the way down.
19:14
All right, have I stalled long enough? All right, Coyote.
19:16
I guess we're going to see what happens.
19:17
We're going to cheers to this? Cheers. Oh, boy. See on the other side.
19:34
Man, that'll wake you up. Mhm. Mega Death. Pretty legit.
19:47
I have one more question for you. Yeah.
19:49
Whether it's a travel show like Bizarre Foods or a science show like MythBusters, there's always this delicate balance where you're trying to educate, but at the same time, you're doing everything that you can to draw eyeballs.
19:59
When it comes to Brave Wilderness, what is your response to the critics who just think that you're some macho idiot who should just get eaten by a Komodo dragon? What's your end game?
20:09
I actually love it when we have articles that are written about us.
20:11
They're like, "This guy's a maniac."
20:12
Cuz we look at it and go, "That's kind of funny cuz I'm really not a macho maniac kind of guy."
20:17
And it does bring people in, but then once they find the channel and they find episodes with manatees and ocelots and conservation projects about little tiny glass frogs, the leaf frogs in the Costa Rican rainforest, they're like, "This stuff is actually really educational."
20:30
So while we do love you guys watching on YouTube, we do want you guys out there exploring your local and state parks.
20:35
But really at the end of the day, for everybody to walk away knowing that they've gotten some sort of an education.
20:40
Even the bite and sting episodes are dispelling myths and encouraging you to admire these animals from a safe distance.
20:46
Let me take the bites and the stings.
20:48
Let me get up close to any animal, no matter what it is.
20:51
If you admire from a safe distance, you'll be just fine.
20:53
And I'll take some time to say that you should admire Blair's Mega Death Sauce perhaps from a safe distance, but not you, Coyote Peterson.
20:58
Don't ever mess around with Mega Death.
21:01
My face right now is like it's like Have you ever like taken a bunch of bottle rockets, cut off their stems, and like put them inside of a milk jug to see what would happen? No, never in my life. No.
21:14
Me neither, but that's kind of what the inside of my mouth feels like right now. You know how it goes.
21:18
This camera, this camera, or this camera.
21:20
Let the people know what you have going on in your life.
21:23
Well, we're continuing to make episodes on the Brave Wilderness channel, and I'm really excited to announce that I actually just wrote my very first book.
21:31
And a lot of times you hear about people who have ghost writers, there's no ghost writer on this book. It was written by me.
21:36
Um it's a series of chapters that are their individual own little short stories.
21:41
They're some of the grand adventures we've gone on.
21:42
It's called Brave Adventures, and it is online right now for pre-sale, and it'll be in stores, on bookshelves, everywhere come September, September 19th.
21:58
The other day we ate those triple atomic wings.
22:00
Like, I was like I was trying to back up my car to park in the parking lot, and I was like this way.
22:05
I was like, "Ooh, I don't think I should drive a car after I do this."
22:08
So, that was interesting. All right.
22:11
Well, I hope you have a DD for this one.
22:13
Hey, what's going on, Hot Ones fans?
22:13
If you liked the video, maybe meet us halfway, throw us a subscribe.
22:17
If you didn't like the video, don't subscribe. I don't want you.
22:21
I don't want you in the tent.
22:22
But, if you liked the video, subscribe. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. I love you. More than a friend.